Getting up close and personal with Basketball Wives
July 27, 2011 Leave a comment
We love this video of our Basketball Wives campaign in action. Click below to have a look!
Hungary’s top MNOs unite on Mobile Wallets
July 25, 2011 1 Comment
Only a month since the UK’s leading network operators announced their decision to team up on NFC, Hungary’s top mobile service providers are doing the same. Vodafone, Magyar Telekom and Telenor have joined forces to launch NFC payment services in phones.
No more loose change! Consumers can soon pay with their phones
With trials of applications beginning this year, the MNOs expect commercial services to be available come 2012. The decision to come together (in alliance with MasterCard, OTP Bank and SuperShop) means the NFC will see a greater push in Hungary, with consumers being able to pay for products and services with their mobile phones much earlier than those in other countries. The alliance is called the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association and plans to lead the way in mobile wallet development in the country.
Hypertag delivers USA’s first marketing campaign
July 20, 2011 2 Comments
Following the success of our X-Men NFC campaign in London this May, we’ve launched the first NFC marketing campaign in the US. VH-1′s latest series of Basketball Wives is to hit our screens soon, and those of us with NFC phones can get a glimpse of the action just by touching a poster.
The poster sites are in bus shelters around the cities of Los Angeles and New York, and link through to exclusive video content as well as the show’s Facebook page. As more and more NFC phones come to market, we’re seeing an increase in advertisers, retailers, brands and network’s interest in NFC campaigns. NFC means traditional marketing media is transformed into something interactive and measurable as well as offering the consumer a more engaging brand experience.
For the full story on the campaign, visit our news page.
Apple and NFC
July 14, 2011 2 Comments
With more of the industry’s big players showing their full support of NFC, including TfL accepting NFC payments from 2012 and Paypal’s recent unveiling of Android-Android payments, the technology seems to be growing more popular by the day.
But what about Apple?
There’s no denying that Apple is a key player in the industry, with many iPhone and iPad owners incredibly loyal to the brand. There have been rumours circulating over the last year on whether Apple will introduce NFC to it’s next generation of iPhones and iPads. Some have claimed that Apple’s next phone, the iPhone 5, will include the technology but insiders at Apple were quick to squash this rumour. However, only weeks later talk of an NFC iPhone picked up again. Generally speaking, the guys at Apple have kept pretty schtum about their NFC plans, and if they are going to showcase the technology on the iPhone5, we probably won’t know for sure until it’s release date (likely to be September/ October 2011).
But can Apple afford not to include NFC technology? One of Apple’s strengths is that they offer groundbreaking firsts with their products. When a technology has so much support from competitors, is it likely that Apple will pass it by?
NFC rumours have released a great infographic on the subject, which you can have a look at here.
Maybe NFC won’t be in the iPhone 5. Apple like to be first at things and Google pipped them to the post on this one (followed closely by Nokia). Now that Apple won’t be the first to showcase the technology, perhaps they have decided to hold back, planning even bigger things with it. I’m pretty certain it will appear in iphones over the next few years but for the moment we’re being kept in suspense.
Payments made easy
July 1, 2011 2 Comments
What NFC can do for you, our Chief Exec in cartoon form, and Barclaycard’s dinosaur milk. It’s all here.
We’re liking Barclaycard’s mockumentary on the evolution of money (below). As well as making us wonder about the taste of dinosaur milk and what TOWIE girls might have been like in medieval times, it’s a great demonstration of how simple NFC payments are. Have a look:
So what’s new with us?
As usual it’s all go here at Hypertag. We’ve had some great feedback on our NFC Murder Mystery Game, including things to work on for future events. We now have a London base with staff based in and around the city. If you have an enquiry or simply want to send us a present (we like gadgets), you can jot down the address here. We’ll be running a similar NFC Murder Mystery game in London shortly – watch this space!
As an NFC payments milestone, discussions on the collaboration between O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere are still going on. Neil Garner had a chat to Brand Shandy [great name! -Ed.] about what this means for retailers, brands, agencies and those working with NFC. You can have a look at what he had to say by visiting their blog (where you’ll also find out what Neil would look like if he were a cartoon character).
As NFC picks up momentum, we want to celebrate what the technology can do for us. There’s a huge number of NFC-related possibilities but these are the few we think you’ll see first:
- Someone buying lunch with their phone. If you’re around our offices on weekday lunchtimes, you’ll regularly see our Chief Architect, James Taylor amazing Subway staff with the magic of m-payments. Very soon however, staff might be less surprised as more and more people take advantge of the simplicity of this technology.
- NFC opening doors. Literally.
- People walking up to posters and holding their phones against them. These guys are getting exclusive content all because of NFC. This could be anything from vouchers, to videos, to game upgrades. If you don’t want to miss out, you can purchase any one of a number of NFC phones. The NFC Forum has quite an extensive lists of the ones available: NFC phones list.
